Words matter. These are the best Eve Arnold Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
It doesn’t matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.
I realize that I had the best of serious picture journalism.
I had in mind a long career.
What has changed is that when I photographed, most people that I photographed didn’t have the right of refusal on their work. It would take a Marilyn Monroe at her height to be able to dictate that.
I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives; I am a woman and I wanted to know about women.
I look for a sense of reality with everything I did. I didn’t work in a studio, I didn’t light anything. I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn’t have to frighten people with heavy equipment. It was that little black box and me and £5 worth of film in my pocket or maybe it was only £2 in those days.
I don’t see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens.
I love the idea I can go off with a single camera and a few rolls of film unencumbered… I was not interested in the illusion of reality, I wanted to get close to what was happening.
It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.
I find going back through things sometimes exhilarating because I find things I didn’t know I had, and sometimes it’s very off putting because there are things I never quite finished, and there’s nothing at all to do about it now.
If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given.
Lesson number one: Pay attention to the intrusion of the camera.
I can’t hold a camera anymore.
What I have tried to do is involve the people I was photographing… if they were willing to give, I was willing to photograph.
I want the subject to be in control. Because they will give me something I couldn’t possibly know about them.
Themes recur again and again in my work.
You should never reveal your true age.
I came to photography by accident.
What you need to be a good photographer is an overwhelming curiosity and a good digestion. Sometimes you feel blessed with curiosity, sometimes you feel cursed with it.
